Georgia on my mind: English language and discursive practices in Georgian culture

By Sonia Maria Melchiorre and Manan Rusheisvili

The series Genderising. Redesigning Gender is a gamble that demonstrates how much the networking activity of universities, together with other society actors, such as our publisher here, and all over the world, can contribute to bringing different cultures together, to help them grow in their respective socio-cultural contexts.
This volume is a result of academic cooperation between the University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy and the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU), Tbilisi, Georgia. The papers were written by academic staff and young researchers working at TSU. They all discuss some of the issues concerning gender from different points of view. Gender has become an interesting issue for research in academia due to its interdisciplinarity. This volume reveals the diversity of the directions for research in this respect.
This series is dedicated to all those who have always believed that gender studies, as a transdisciplinary field, could have a future in the academia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edizioni Sette Città
• Release date: Apr 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9788878539853

Book preview

Introducing genderising. Redesigning gender

Sonia Maria Melchiorre. University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy

The idea of creating a series that would host the work of both Italian and foreign scholars working in the many fields of gender studies was born about three years ago, before the pandemic disrupted our lives and revolutionised our work.

The inspiring meetings with colleagues who have been working on gender studies in their respective countries for years, and who, in many cases, have brought civic engagement back to the fore in university research, have convinced me that academia is ready and well equipped to deal with the epochal change underway. This series is dedicated to all those who have always believed that gender studies, as a transdisciplinary investigation, could have a future in academia. For too long, in fact, scholars and researchers have been derided for their efforts in this direction, and not only outside the academy. Gender studies have taught us to look at the world with fresh eyes; they have problematised the concept of freedom in Western societies; they have allowed the invisible to become visible in the light of day and have eventually revolutionised the language of the future. The series Genderising. Redesigning Gender is a gamble that demonstrates how much the networking activity of universities, together with other society actors, such as our publisher here, and all over the world, can contribute to bringing different cultures together, to help them grow in their respective socio-cultural contexts. I am also convinced that education is still a privilege for those who are appointed to convey knowledge, and a gift for those who receive it. It is our duty to create a space where younger generations can rediscover a love of knowledge and become whoever they wish to be.

Foreword

Manana Ruseishvili-Cartledge Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Georgia

This volume is a result of academic cooperation between the University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy and Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU), Tbilisi, Georgia.

The authors of the volume express their gratitude to Dr Sonia Maria Melchiorre from the University of Tuscia, under whose initiation and general management the publication of this volume has been possible.

The papers were written by academic staff and young researchers working at TSU. They all discuss some of the issues concerning gender from different points of view. Gender has become an interesting issue for research in academia due to its interdisciplinarity.

This volume reveals the diversity of the directions for research in this respect.

The paper by Manana Rusieshvili-Cartledge & Rusudan Dolidze There is no room for weakness here! (Cultural metaphors and stereotypes versus gay love in film and society), describes the reasons for the mixed reactions generated regarding a Georgian-Swedish film And then we danced which has won several prestigious awards since its release in 2019.

Specifically, based on two sets of data, this paper explores the reasons for the above-mentioned

attitudes to the film. First, the battle of the director of the film against socially rooted cultural metaphors and gender stereotypes (for instance, those associated with the Georgian national dance) as depicted in the film are described and their significance for Georgian culture is explained.

At the second stage of the research, the posts describing the reactions to online film reviews and discussions (initiated largely by church people, ultranationalist and ultraconservative party members and their followers) are presented. The online comments are analysed based on the points of view expressed toward the plot of the film – positive, neutral (conciliatory) and negative. The main arguments are foregrounded and verbal strategies (for instance, employment of hate speech, impolite and rude lexical units) are identified and explained in the context of Georgian culture.

Two papers in this volume are dedicated to the description of the ways the representatives of the two most vulnerable groups of society (LGBT+ people and women) contemplate their roles and self-esteem and how these are expressed through linguistic and paralinguistic means.

Linguistic and sociolinguistic manifestations of self-esteem of LGBT+ people, one of the most discriminated communities not only in Georgia but globally, are discussed in the paper by Tinatin Dadianidze " Just put up with it and turn a blind eye! How do LGBT+ people estimate themselves in Georgia?".

The empirical data for this study were taken from the interviews conducted with the representatives of the LGBT+ community and based on an open-ended questionnaire that included questions about self-attitude and self-esteem.

Employing a combination of the qualitative method of research and the interdisciplinary approach to discourse analysis, Dadianidze explores the reasons behind low levels of self-esteem the respondents revealed through linguistic and paralinguistic markers. In addition, the answers to the interviews show the general atmosphere and attitudes of certain groups of society toward sexual minorities.

A paper by Mariana Papashvili " Is a woman’s place in the kitchen? – Women’s perception of their role in society: Georgian context" focuses on the women’s perception of their role in a male-dominated society. The main method utilized during the data collection process was interviewing focus groups (25 women of various social and cultural backgrounds from different regions of Georgia) employing open-ended questionnaires regarding women’s perceptions of their role in Georgian society.

As a result of this research, linguistic features regarding the women’s stereotypical perceptions of their role in Georgian society were revealed which describe women as subordinated, culturally constrained members of society. The data also discuss social statuses, obligations, and commitments that build up a woman’s image in Georgian society.

The author believes that the main challenges to the women’s perception of their role in society are the empowerment of women, solidarity in society, adjustment of jobs both in the capital of the country and the regions.

In her paper " Gender Assessment Tendencies of the English Term of Endearment baby (and its Variations) in the Speakers of English Sofia Nikolaishvili analyses gender assessment tendencies regarding the English term of endearment baby" (and its variations) in mono and bilingual speakers of English. The research is based on the online questionnaires and online interviews and discusses the connection between the attitudes to the gender on the one hand and various societal, cultural and psychological elements of a linguistic community. The data led the author to conclude that there must be a difference between the ways mono VS bilingual speakers of English assess gender regarding the particular term of endearment, as well as endearment terms in general. Following Mills (1995), it is believed in the article that these differences are determined by the type of grammatical category of gender in English and the second language of bilingual speakers, by the beliefs and ideas that motivate the lexico-semantic gender conferred to words and reflect the stereotypes and dominant ideologies in societies.

Two papers are dedicated to the gender roles as described in fairy tales which reflect gender stereotypes practised in the culture within which they were created.

Sopio Totibadze’s paper A Woman Turned into a Man – a Sociolinguistic Analysis of a Georgian Fairy Tale," discusses an old Georgian fairy tale and its implications for gender studies. Although the topics of transgenderism or lesbianism are extremely rare or non-existent in old or modern, literary Georgian fairy tales, the existence of such a tale is significant for the research from the point of view of the social context and linguistic peculiarities serving to convey and pass on the meaning indirectly in a disguised manner.

A paper by Nato Peradze Conceptual Metaphors and Gender: A Study of Fantasy Books and Their Japanese Animations analyses gendered conceptual metaphors in several fantasy books and their Japanese animations. In the first part of the paper, utilizing the quantitative and qualitative methods of gendered conceptual metaphors found in classical fairy tales are analysed and their emergence in the novels against the influence of cultural and social background are discussed. The second part of the paper focuses on the transposition of the metaphors into another medium and discusses differences in metaphors and proposes explanations behind certain cultural and gender-specific motifs.

Professor Manana Rusieshvili-Cartledge

Head of the Department of English Philology at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Georgia

There is no room for weakness here! (Cultural metaphors and stereotypes versus gay love in film and society)

Manana Ruseishvili-Cartledge & Rusudan Dolidze Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Georgia

Georgia declares European values and has introduced some progressive changes regarding human rights (Fighting Discrimination, Hate Crime and Hate Speech in Georgia, n. d.)

However, there are still issues to be solved, especially those related to the protection of women’s and LGBT+ people’s rights in the country. Moreover, it is claimed that ‘the population of Georgia is not well-aware of the rights of the minority groups, for example, of LGBT+ groups’ (Hate Crime, Hate Speech and Discrimination in Georgia, 2018).

Since its release in 2019, the Georgian-Swedish film " And then we danced has won several prestigious awards and was nominated for an Oscar" in the same year. However, the film about the love of a gay couple generated mixed reactions in Georgian society.

This paper explores the reasons for the above-mentioned attitudes to the film. To achieve this goal, two sets of data are discussed. At the first stage of the research, the battle of the director of the film against socially rooted cultural metaphors and gender stereotypes (for instance, those associated with the Georgian national dance) as depicted in the film are described and their significance for Georgian culture is explained.

At the second stage of the research, the posts reflecting the reactions to online film reviews and discussions (initiated largely by church people, ultranationalist and ultraconservative party members and their followers) are investigated. The online comments are analysed based on the point of view expressed toward the plot of the film – positive, neutral (conciliatory) and negative. The main arguments are foregrounded, verbal strategies (for instance, employment of hate speech, impolite and rude lexical units) are identified and explained in the context of Georgian culture.

Keywords: hate discourse, cultural metaphors, online polylogues, CMDA

Introduction

Although Georgia has introduced some progressive changes regarding human rights, there are still issues to be solved, concerning the protection of women’s and LGBT+ people’s rights in the country. According to the report of the Current Affairs Committee of the Council of Europe’s (CoE) Congress of Local and Regional Authorities (Georgia in the CoE Report on LGBT+ Rights, 2021), Georgia is amongst the countries who restrict the work of civil society and human rights defenders via measures often specifically targeting LGBT+ organisations.

Therefore, it can be claimed that LGBT+ people are considered to be one of the most discriminated groups in Georgia. For instance, research by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) has revealed that only 23% of the Georgian population from those taking part in the poll maintained that the protection of LGBT+ rights was important. (Reiter, 2019; NDI, 2021).The Orthodox Christian Church remains powerful in Georgia and largely determines the public attitude towards certain issues, including gender roles and rights of LGBT+ people.

In 2019, the government declined to guarantee protection for a planned LGBT+ pride rally in Tbilisi. In 2020, right-wing protesters (who are believed to be pro-Russian by the NGOs working on human rights and political opposition) gathered outside the offices of an LGBT+ pride organisation and reportedly vandalised the building’s exterior. In July 2021, during the so-called pogrom, religious and far-right groups sought to thwart a planned LGBTQ+ pride event. 53 reporters covering the events were beaten or abused, and one later died.(Lomsadze, 2021)

Against the background of the situation described above, this paper aims at discussing the film And then we danced from the cultural and linguistic perspectives and analyses the attitudes to it as expressed in electronic media. To achieve this goal, two sets of data are discussed in this paper. At the first stage of the research, the ways and reasons for defiance of socially rooted cultural metaphors and gender stereotypes, for instance, those associated with the Georgian national dance, are described and analysed.

At the second stage of the research, the online comments posted by members of society and depicting their attitudes to the film and its screening in Georgia are analysed, using the combination of CMDA (Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis) methodology and the theory of linguistic impoliteness.

Based on the above, the research questions of the paper are as follows:

what cultural metaphors and cultural stereotypes connected to the Georgian dance are defied in the film?

what were the reasons for the resistance in certain groups of Georgian society to the film " And then we danced" as expressed in the electronic media?

what linguistic strategies are employed while expressing the attitudes to the film?

Data and methodology of the research

The methodology of this research follows its goals. At the first stage, cultural metaphors appearing in the film are identified and analysed with regard to their significance for the Georgian traditional socio-cultural context.

At the second stage of the research, the online polylogues posted by the members of society are analysed based on CMDA (Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis) methodology. Specifically, the comments are explored according to the negative versus positive and conciliatory points of view expressed in reference to the film plot, verbal strategies (for instance, employment of hate speech and impoliteness strategies) are identified and analysed; the main arguments are foregrounded and explained in the context of Georgian culture.

The data for the article were collected in two stages. At the first stage of the data collection, cultural metaphors and relevant verbal parts were selected from the film and analysed from the point of view of the Georgian cultural metaphors and stereotypes.

In the second part of the research, the polylogues, asynchronous posts reflecting the reaction and attitudes to the film " And then we danced" were collected and explored. More specifically, 228 comments were selected from the posts following the film trailers, news videos about the public reaction to the screening in Tbilisi and Batumi,